‘Andor’ On Disney+ Review: The First ‘Star Wars’ Show to Transcend the Franchise

We’ve seen a lot of Star Wars on Disney+ over the last few years. The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan Kenobi all brought a galaxy far, far away to very, very close laptop screens. While the quality of each series may differ, they all presented Star Wars on TV in much the same way that we’ve seen Star Wars in film: big action, cute characters, good vs. evil, kooky aliens, even a few one-liners. It’s easy for the initiated to see how The Book of Boba Fett differs from The Mandalorian, but they’re all Star Wars.

Andor, the latest in Disney+’s ever-lengthening line of Star Wars shows, is the first Star Wars film or show to feel fundamentally different. Andor is, first and foremost, a political thriller. It’s not just Star Wars dipping its toes into another genre, which is what Andor’s sequel Rogue One: A Star Wars Story feels like by comparison. Andor presents Star Wars as fully subsumed by the trappings of political thrillers.

This is evident from the opening scene, which is fully film noir with its seedy locale, moody atmosphere, brooding leading man, and intriguing femme fatale. It looks like Star Wars because we’ve seen our fair share of alien cantinas and dives before, but it doesn’t feel like Star Wars. Every Star Wars tale is a varying mix of old sci-fi pulp serials, Joseph Campbell’s hero myth, and Akira Kurosawa’s samurai film work — but head writer Tony Gilroy and director Toby Haynes aren’t pulling from those references. Instead, they’ve created a series that is patient, tense, and subdued backed with an ever-increasing feeling of dread. There is no clearcut clash of good vs. evil in Andor. Just like the powerful Empire and the rallying rebellion, Andor’s tone is appropriately relentless. It feels more like the immovable on a collision course with the unstoppable.

Andor successfully pulls off this tone, a vibe that one could call Chernobyl-ian, by diverging from all of the tricks that filmmakers use to shout “Star Wars.” Director Toby Haynes employs more patience than we’re used to, letting scenes simmer until they boil over — especially scenes wherein Kyle Soller’s ladder-climbing fascist Syril Karn brushes up against actual power and consequences.

Andor also foregoes The Volume, the all-encompassing digital screen stage that transported actors to various alien worlds on the previous Star Wars shows. Instead, Andor uses what appear to be practical sets and what are definitely real actors in real, breathtaking locations. Scenes produced in The Volume felt seamless before, but they feel retroactively claustrophobic after seeing how far and wide Andor’s story goes.

Andor’s look is unmistakably Star Wars, albeit Star Wars as visualized by Chernobyl production designer Luke Hull. Those visuals hit differently, though, because of Nicholas Britell’s distinctly non-Star Wars score. There isn’t a trace of John Williams in it, nor can you hear the influence of Ludwig Göransson, whose work has mostly defined Star Wars’ Disney+ era. Andor is uncharacteristically quiet. Whereas Star Wars previously used themes to tell audiences how to feel about characters (think of “Princess Leia’s Theme” as opposed to “The Imperial March”), Britell’s score treats the characters as mysteries and instead seems to hum in the background. The score gets amped up around once an episode, but instead we hear what sounds like Depeche Mode and, most startlingly, a drum kit. When was the last time you heard the sound of rock drums in Star Wars?

This is the world that the characters of Andor inhabit, a world full of tension and no release where no external factors clue you in on anyone’s motives. Matching that energy, the cast — a stacked ensemble of character actors led by Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Stellan Skarsgård as Luthen Rael — play every scene like there’s a ticking time bomb just offscreen. Luna in particular feels even more at home in the role now than he did in Rogue One. He plays a more harried version of Cassian Andor, one who’s always in over his head and always looking for an exit. The series even acknowledges that Diego Luna, the man, is so naturally likable that it can be hard to accept him as a merciless mercenary. Andor folds that character trait into Cassian by giving him plenty of acquaintances, a string of exes, and even a confidant or two. Everyone seems to know Cassian Andor… and that’s definitely not a good thing for a guy trying to be a spy.

As rebellion (lowercase R) leader Luthen Rael, Skarsgård leans fully into his weathered gravitas, way more like his Chernobyl character than his slightly goofy Thor character. But don’t take that to mean that Skarsgård is playing it stoic because, again, the mood in Andor is that time is just running out in general. Luthen Rael utilizes Skarsgåd’s intense range, with him emotionally chewing out rebels who question his orders in one scene… and him donning a coif, rings, and plum-colored robe in his day-to-day identity as an affable antiques dealer. His scenes with Genevieve O’Reilly, who plays senator and secret rebel conspirator Mon Mothma, are a tour de force that encapsulate all of the anxiety of living under Imperial rule. O’Reilly herself is captivating as Mon Mothma, a character whose strength and resolve has always been offscreen due to the character’s limited presence. Andor lets O’Reilly brandish the (metaphorical) armor that the senator has to wear under her regal attire, and it’s incredibly satisfying to see this character’s potential finally realized.

If all of this makes Star Wars fans worry that there isn’t enough Star Wars-iness in this Star Wars show, don’t worry: there are plenty of Star Wars Easter eggs in this series, which you’ll catch if you watch with captions on and then look up every proper noun. That’s because, despite its tonal divergence, Andor absolutely nails one quintessential Star Wars characteristic: it drops you into the plot and doesn’t hold your hand so much as pull you along by the upper arm. Like in 1977’s Star Wars, Andor is not interested in wasting time spelling things out when the context clues are right there. This makes Andor the densest Star Wars show to date and worth repeat viewings.

You’ll want to watch or rewatch the first three episodes all at once, as those and every three-episode chunk after constitute one story — essentially a movie. This storytelling conceit causes the ends of Episodes 1 and 2 to feel as if they come out of nowhere, especially if your brain has been trained to expect major reveals in the last 10 seconds of these shows. On the plus side, those episodes hover around 40 minutes in length, so it’s much easier to move on to the next episode than if it was 60+ minutes and then no cliffhanger (Netflix). And while it’s good that Andor is very much a show-don’t-tell kind of show, it forgets that credo when it comes to Cassian Andor. We’re constantly told that Cassian Andor is trouble, but episodes pass before we are told about his incomparable spy skills. Up until then, it would be very easy for someone who hasn’t seen Rogue One to assume that Cassian Andor was just an unlucky scammer who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But neither of those problems come close to canceling out what makes Andor such an engrossing series. While it’s a bit of a slow burn of a show, Andor draws you in because it is so thoroughly and messily human. Like in Chernobyl — notice a trend here? — everything that happens, every major moment, comes as a consequence of hubris, jealousy, laziness, fear, anxiety, etc. Andor is a Star Wars show that strips away all of the franchise’s humor, levity, and zippiness and instead focuses on the unpredictable nature of humanity and how people, people of all social statuses, react to extremely unprecedented circumstances. Andor is Star Wars, distilled down to its revolutionary soul.